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Thursday, December 5, 2013

Jay Dellamere Northcote and I are the LGBT Romance Authors of the Month at Mrs Condit and Friends Read Books! Congrats Jay! I couldn't be more thrilled to share this with you. And congrats also to Mary Elizabeth Wine who won in the General Romance category.Actually all the nominees are amazing authors and all I can say is my TBR list has grown enormously. You can check out the news and reviews here:http://mrsconditreadsbooks.com/index.php/?p=16490#comment-4567

I want to give a big thank you to Becky Condit for her fabulous review of Bashert, and for nominating me. And thank you to everyone who voted. You guys rock!I'm posting Becky's review of Bashert below. She really understood what I was trying to say in this story.

Becky reviews the Hanukkah story Bashert by Gale Stanley. 5 sweet peas! Happy Hanukkah!BLURB: Is it possible to be a good Jew and a gay man?Not for Jonah Stern. He can’t reconcile his faith with his attraction to boys, so he turns his back on Judaism. A college scholarship is Jonah’s ticket to freedom from his disapproving parents. Next step: losing his virginity to Christian, the blue-eyed blond man of his dreams.

Instead, Jonah has a fateful meeting with Aaron Blumberg and ends up celebrating Hanukkah. Aaron tells him they’re bashert—meant to be. But Jonah has doubts. He believes his lack of faith will create a wedge between them. It’s up to Aaron to bridge the gap and convince Jonah to take a leap of faith.BECKY’S OPINION: Bashert is less a romance than a story of finding oneself, and that makes all the difference in this being a fabulous short story. Oh, there is an attraction between the two MCs, and you can’t help but root for them to get together. Jonah is a gay college freshman and extremely sex-shy. He’s a virgin who has made it his goal to lose his virginity by the end of the year. He is a lapsed Jew who has lost his connection to his family and his roots.Aaron is older, probably four years older, and a graduate student. He is also gay and has been through the self-questioning period that Jonah is going through. The thing is, Jonah doesn’t think he needs to be “fixed,” as he doesn’t see his lack of religious practice as a problem. It’s only when he experiences the lighting of the Menorah with Aaron and hears Aaron explain how and why he came back to being an observant Jew that Jonah allows himself to let painful questions about his sexual orientation, faith, and family bubble back up.There is one important thing that Aaron was too late to fix in his own life but it isn’t too late for Jonah. The question is, will Jonah be willing to take that step? This is a wonderful, wonderful short story that is enjoyable whether you are Jewish, any other faith, or observe no religious practices at all. I absolutely loved Bashert.